Vote online? Be careful what you click for...

MPs could be forced to vote on restoring the death penalty if more than 100,000 people sign an online petition. Last night it looked as if that target would be exceeded comfortably.

The website set up by the Government to invite the public to suggest policies for debate in Parliament inevitably crashed on its first day under the weight of the sheer volume of traffic.

Even before the official launch of the site, it was inundated with hundreds of suggestions, from pulling out of the EU and scrapping the Yuman Rites Act to ending immigration.

There’s no guarantee that any of the proposals will ever reach the floor of the Commons, even if they achieve the minimum 100,000 hits.

But Sir George Young, Leader of the House, has indicated that a vote on bringing back hanging is highly likely. Parliament hasn’t considered the issue for 13 years, when MPs voted decisively against.

Writing in the Mail, Sir George said: ‘If lots of people want Parliament to do something which it rejects, then it is up to MPs to explain the reasons to their constituents. What else is Parliament for?

‘People have strong opinions, and it does not serve democracy well if we ignore them and pretend that their views do not exist.’

Fine words, but believe it when you see it.

We’ve been here before. A couple of years ago, Labour set up a similar website. By far the biggest response was to a petition urging Gordon Brown to resign immediately.

Nearly 100,000 people signed that one, too, but it didn’t make any difference. Far from bowing to the will of the people, Gordon superglued himself to his desk and had eventually to be dragged out by what was left of his fingernails — even after he’d lost the election.

If politicians are prepared to defy the result of a general election, they’re hardly going to take any notice of an online petition.

Once safely in office, most MPs cheerfully ignore the opinions of their constituents.

Even if there is a vote on the death penalty, it won’t get passed in Parliament. For the record, I wouldn’t bring it back either.

And if it meant trudging to the ballot box on a wet Wednesday to cast your vote in a referendum, rather than clicking on a webpage in the comfort of your own home, I doubt there would be a majority in the country for its restoration.

The reason this emotive topic regularly tops online polls is because it illustrates graphically the gulf between politicians and those of us who pay their wages.

When hanging was abolished, we were assured that life imprisonment would mean life. Today, killers can be out in as little as seven years.

Only this week we learned that Milly Dowler’s killer Levi Bellfield is suing for £30,000 compensation for cuts and bruises he suffered in a prison attack. Bellfield says if he wins — which he almost certainly will — he intends to use the money to buy a caravan, so confident is he that he will not spend the rest of his life in jail.

Hardly surprising that in such cases some people hanker after the rope.

The gutters of Westminster are littered with broken promises. Call Me Dave’s first year in office has been a catalogue of betrayal.

His Lib Dem partner in crime Nick Clegg reneged on his pledge not to raise tuition fees. And this week Vince Cable was dusting off his plans for a so-called ‘mansion tax’ even though it was rejected and ridiculed first time around.

You’d never think the Lib Dems actually ended up with fewer MPs last year than they had in 2005. They’re behaving in government as if they’d won an overall majority — and Dave’s caving in to them regardless of the millions who voted Conservative.

OK, so you can argue that coalition demands compromise. But that’s no excuse for the contempt for public opinion which MPs exercise daily.

We are governed by a self-obsessed, petty, insular, unrepresentative political class, most of whom have never had a real-world job in their lives. Look no further than the hysteria over phone hacking.

While there was undoubtedly criminality which has to be punished, on a scale of one to ten, hacking was way down most people’s list of priorities.

Voters are worried about job cuts, wage freezes, sky-high taxes and the frightening increase in the price of everything from basic foodstuffs to fuel.

We’re paying through the nose for energy as it is, without the Government piling on extra charges to bankroll its deranged ‘green’ agenda.

Britain is handing out billions in foreign aid to countries which either don’t need it, or are run by tyrants who simply steal it to buy private jets and build foreign property portfolios.

Prime Minister Jeremy Clarkson?

At the same time the Treasury is slashing the defence budget, scrapping warships and sacking soldiers. Meanwhile, a small fortune is being spent on bombing Libya, simply so Dave can burnish his humanitarian credentials.

And promises to cut the size of the state are made a mockery of by new figures which show that Whitehall and its attendant quangos are still hiring legions of pointless bureaucrats. Frankly, I’m at a loss to see how inviting people to log in to an online suggestion box is going to make any difference.

And I’m not sure government by Twitter would be preferable. It would only unleash the unaccountable electronic lynch mob, motivated by spite, envy and resentment.

People would vote for anything on a whim and later come to regret it. Voting for policies online would be like pressing the One Click button on Amazon after a few sherberts. You’d end up with something you didn’t really want and certainly couldn’t afford. Be careful what you click for.

While an internet plebiscite might have the advantage of getting us out of the EU and demolishing those hideous wind farms, we might wake up to find that we’ve elected Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister and introduced the death penalty for bankers.

We don’t want gimmicks, we want MPs to reflect the views of the paying public and stop serving their own self-interests. As Sir George Young says: what else is Parliament for?

It’s not much to ask, even in an imperfect democracy. And there’s always the ballot box for those who can be bothered.

Postman Pat and his walk sequencing machine

Royal Mail bosses deny they are closing a first-floor sorting office because it’s too dangerous for postmen to climb the stairs.

They say it was a business decision to shut the Grade II-listed building, in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire — not because of fears over elf’n’safety.

We must take their word for it, although one local councillor insists the reasons they gave him for the closure included ‘the need to de-risk multi-floor working’.

That certainly sounds like modern Royal Mail-speak.

The Post Office is currently in the process of spending millions of pounds buying what it describes as ‘walk-sequencing machines’ and a fleet of giant baby buggies.

These will replace the 25,000 bicycles issued to postmen. Royal Mail has for some time been concerned about the dangers of postmen riding pushbikes.

Our postman Mike turned up one morning wearing what looked like a bunch of bananas on his head.

He said he’d been ordered to wear the helmet by elf’n’safety. After I mentioned it in this column, Mike got so much stick back at the sorting office that I’ve never seen him in it since.

Now they’re taking his trusty bike away and making him push a buggy. The bicycles are being given to Africa.

This news is a blow to Britain’s biggest surviving cycle manufacturer, Pashley, in Stratford-upon-Avon, which has been supplying the Post Office for 35 years. The ‘walk-sequencing machines’ are made in China.

No doubt that was a business decision, too.

Asylum seekers hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry

From time to time I may have written about both illegal immigrants and wheelie bins. But never before in the same sentence.Until now.

Six illegal immigrants have been detained by a border patrol in Calais. The four men and two women, all from Vietnam, were discovered hiding in a consignment of wheelie bins bound for Britain. They were detected stowed away in the back of a Polish-registered lorry by a vigilant sniffer dog called Jake.

Illegal immigrants hiding in wheelie bins in a Polish lorry. What a perfect metaphor for modern Britain.

Council officials in Redditch have been spray-painting stray dog poo orange to shame pet owners into clearing up their pets’ mess.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier just to buy a few high pressure hoses? What kind of a job is painting dog poo, anyway?

Del Boy and Rodney started it all when they dressed up as Batman and Robin. Now The Dark Spartan and The Black Void have taken to the streets of Torquay to fight crime.

Unlike Superman, they are immune to Kryptonite, but The Black Void does admit to suffering from stress-related irritable bowel syndrome — which could be tricky if they come up against a blagger with a sawn-off Purdey.

A previous version of this article referred to the six individuals apprehended in France when attempting to enter Britain in wheelie bins as asylum seekers when they should have been described as illegal immigrants. We are happy to set the record straight.